School Sanitation

This project will fit in the SSHE programme from the IRC: School Sanitation and Hygiene Education (SSHE) focuses on the responsibility to provide children with an effective and healthy learning environment. It includes the provision of facilities that children need for sanitation, hand-washing and water supply and the support to children to develop skills, attitudes and knowledge on effective hygiene. At the same time, children can communicate their new behaviours and skills to their homes and communities and use it in future when they have become parents themselves. See http://www.irc.nl/page/114

WASTE will mainly focus on ecological sanitation options. The first project is described here.

School Sanitation Project in San Fernando, the Philippines 2005 - 2006

The Waterboard Hunze en Aa’s in the north of the Netherlands has made a donation for a school sanitation project in San Fernando (La Union) in the Philippines.

Together with WASTE, CAPS in the Philippines and the city of San Fernando it was decided to support three schools in the communities where the ISSUE programme has pilots for ecological sanitation toilets.

The three elementary schools, in Naguybuyuban and San Augustin, have very poor toilet facilities. In upper Nagyubuyuban, the school has approximately 130 pupils and in lower Nagyubuyuban, there are only 90 pupils. The school in San Augustin is much bigger and provides education to more than a thousand children.

For the Nagyubuyuban schools, there are plans to build permanent concrete toilet facilities according to new building standards of the Ministry of Education. Each school will get 2 new toilets, one for the upper classroom cluster and the other for lower cluster. The existing toilet will be repaired and make fit for the teachers. Each toilet will have two units, one for male and one for female. The toilets will consist of a urine diversion toilet with bidet, raising the walls and roof and an outside lavatory (hand washing).

In San Agustin, the plan is to build two facilities, one for boys and one for girls. Each facility will have 4 toilet cubicles with urine diversion toilets and lavatories with mirrors. In addition the boys will get 3 to 4 urinals. Each toilet unit will have a septic tank for grey water and a holding tank for urine. These are bigger facilities because San Agustin has more students. The grey water as well as the urine will, be used for growing plants in the neighbourhood and agricultural crops in the surrounding fields.

The toilets rebuilt for the teachers will be similar to those of the pupils.

The donation from the waterboard does not fully cover all the expected costs, but an elementary school in Gouda has planned to organise a thematic week in 2006 around global development issues and to raise funds for these aforementioned schools.